1. Introduction

I found lots of people struggling to get catalyst driver work in Ubuntu. This issue has been persistent for some laptops, ever since Ubuntu 13.04 came out, specially for Intel, AMD dual graphics setup. For people, who have been looking at catalyst drivers since http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1930450 post was published, should not be that hard to find the solution, but for those who are new to Linux, or don’t have time for these kinds of issues, this might be a show stopper bug.

2. Installation

I removed the downgrading libudev and xserver-xorg-video section. Therefore, if you want to install 13.4 stable follow this link. For this tutorial, I will be using 13.11 beta 1 driver. I recommend you download the latest version from here. I don’t usually test the newer versions (let me know if there are some problems while installing the newer versions). Unless AMD changes compatibility with xorg, kernel and xserver-xorg-video-intel it should be fine.

If possible, always use latest drivers. Before downloading the driver, make sure to read the release note (found in the download page) to find out the supported kernel and xorg versions and bug fixes. Download catalyst driver from here and unzip it in a directory. Using command line and building packages is the preferred method of installing the driver.

i. Using a GUI method

Using a terminal go to the directory, where you have unzipped the file and run following command.

sudo sh ./amd*.run

It should open up a GUI, which you can use to easily install the driver. After reboot, you can follow from Step 4 of this tutorial. However, If you want to play 32-bit games as well, install necessary library using following command and then follow Step 4. If you are on ubuntu 13.10, ia32-libs is not available (see 32-bit library installation problem).

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32gcc1 libc6-i386

Note: Many people have reported lots of problems (graphics and library) using above method. If you have graphics related errors, make sure you follow following option. However, make sure you properly remove this package (5. Reset Everything), before going with following option.

32-bit library installation problem: From ubuntu 13.10 onwards ia32-libs meta package is not present. If you get error while playing some 32-bit games, you need to install the 32-bit counter part of the package that provides the library with :i386 suffix. E.g If the error mentions libGLU.so.1, you need to install libglu1-mesa:i386 and so on. You can inspect necessary packages from this link or if you want to install the packages I installed (after inspecting ia32-libs dependency in ubuntu 13.04), install them from this link.

For ubuntu 13.10, use Ubuntu/saucy. You can find out the string using following command.

sh ./amd-*.run --listpkg

e. If second last command does not execute (say it complains about not having any graphics card installed), you might have turned off AMD graphics card using vgaswitcheroo switch, which you can enable using following command and then will be able to execute above command (before reboot). If you have already rebooted, go to a virtual terminal (Ctrl + Alt + F1), before login, and run above command (second last) to create xorg.conf file.

sudo su
echo ON > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

Also, if you later plan to remove catalyst and go with open source only option, you can copy following line into /etc/rc.local file (before exit 0) and this will turn off your AMD graphics card at boot and fix the heating caused by AMD graphics card.

echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

3. Other Errors

a. Fix unity, if it broke during installation (this will reset your Desktop)

cd ~/.config
rm -rf compiz-1 dconf gnome-session

You can also install compizconfig-settings-manager (cccsm) and enable OpenGL and Ubuntu Unity Plugin to get back the dash and other visual components.

b. TF2, Dota 2, Steam OpenGL or networking error

i. If other applications runs, but steam fails to start with proper OpenGL support while using AMD drivers, you may choose to follow the command line and building the packages option, and if that does not fix the problem, you might have to clean up and re-install Steam.

Move SteamApps directory to some other place (it will be very fast, if you don’t change the drive), and re-install steam. You can move back that directory, after first login.

It is probably because of a file in your home directory called .drirc. To fix this error, delete this hidden file logout login back and start the game in Steam. If it still does not work, make sure libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 is installed. Also, you can create another user, copy or link steam related files and directories (~/.steam, ~/.local/share/Steam, ~/.steampid, ~/.steampath) and start Steam using this new account, to see if the error exists.

iii. While using AMD card, if it fails to login, it might be because of this error.

Adding following text to /etc/hosts might solve the network related error. However, use this text only if it fails due to networking issue.

87.248.210.253 media.steampowered.com

c. GPU Hang

With Intel drivers you might get sudden desktop freeze, or programs may slow down. Let us find out if it is actually a GPU hang issue, that I am talking about.

While the desktop or some application freezes, go to a virtual terminal (Ctrl + Alt + F1), login and run following command

Also make sure, you set game settings to lower, if you want to play it using Intel graphics card.

If you get slow frames per second in wine while using AMD graphics card, it might be because of the input lag that has not been fixed for a long time. For Intel graphics card in wine there is this sudden drop in FPS. I suggest you install software packages called htop (sudo apt-get install htop) and xosd-bin (sudo apt-get install xosd-bin). Run htop in a virtual terminal (Ctrl + Alt + F1) and run game with following command (to show frame per seconds on the screen).

When game starts to lag and frame per seconds drops, switch to the virtual terminal, wait till the cpu percentage for the game process drops to normal (below 100) and switch back to X (Ctrl + Alt + F7) and continue playing. I was experimenting with xf86-video-intel-2.99.903 and the installation process was not seamless. I found this package to be quite good (only two or three instances of severe lag). Therefore, upgrade to this version (when it releases) and use above method to see how it performs. In my test, I found in one of the games under wine (1.7.1), Intel graphics card to have better frame per seconds than the catalyst driver.

4. Test

a. Run fgl_glxgears and check the speed.

$ fgl_glxgears

b. If you have dual graphics cards (Intel and AMD), switch between both and see if they work

6. Graphical Card Switcher (Optional)

As you saw in 4 (above), you can switch between two graphics cards using the command line. Firing up command line each time you want to switch graphics cards is not very intuitive. In that case, you could open Catalyst Control Center using sudo amdcccle and press the appropriate radio button and logout and login back. Since, even that step is not that good, I thought I would share a script that does it for me. Create a file in the bin directory of your home folder called switchamdintel.pl (you can name it anything you like) with following content.

As you might have guessed, in above script you should change username to your actual username and place a 256×256 png image of something that says amd and intel inside Icons directory called amd-intel.png. Also, adjust path of Exec and Icon path to locations where these files are located. If string comparison line in above perl script is different, change it to the actual output thrown by aticonfig –pxl command.

Make both files executable using chmod +x filename. If you logout and login, from now on you can search switch keyword in unity dash or go to System category in application menu and launch the switcher. It will change the graphics cards and logout.

In case of open source driver, if you don’t turn off radeon using vgaswitcheroo, it generates huge amount of heat (starting from boot). I guess you are not mentioning the heating that happens due to heavy gaming. Right ? Make sure, when you uninstalled catalyst, vgaswitcheroo was re-enabled.

Heat generated during gaming can be tackled by using laptop cooling pad (even a cheap one will do, because it maintains sufficient space between the laptop input fan and the surface).

Thanks for the tutorial. After long time struggling with Catalyst drivers with Linux in my laptop, finally one solution that really helped!

The driver is working fine. But even though I locked libudev0 and xserver-xorg-video-intel in Synaptic as recommended, every time the system runs an update, I have to reinstall again both of them due “low-graphics mode error”. Last time after the reinstallation of those two files, I was not able to fix Unity, so I moved to Gnome 3.6 which is working fine for the moment.

regarding the beta driver, originally I installed the one available last weekend (ver. 13.15.100.1-linux-x86.x86_64) and didnt worked for me (the screen kept freezing, no bottons at the top of the windows and so on). I downloaded and installed ver. 13.4. (which is working fine until the automatic upgrades).

I will take my chances with the new beta (ver. 13.8) and keep you informed of the results…

I followed all the steps, but at boot time, instead of taking me to the user login screen, it takes me to a command prompt login (like a server).
To recover system, I have to manually restore original xorg.conf.

If it does not work, you should be able to restore back to your original open source drivers using step 5. Installing AMD graphics driver is not always seamless in Linux. After removing the catalyst driver and removing xorg.conf (or restoring to original version), if it still throws you to the command prompt, you need to install the meta package that fixes lots of these issues. In case of ubuntu the command is.

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

and in case of kubuntu it is

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Having said that, I still wonder, why it did not work for you. I hope you downloaded catalyst 13.8 beta 2, went with the manual installation steps, created the xorg.conf file using “aticonfig –initial -f” command and made sure new /etc/X11/xorg.conf file is created.

One more thing you could do before catalyst drive installation is run following commands.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

In my case, if I only have open source drivers, I always make sure that I have deleted the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (I don’t know what you meant by restore). On the other hand, when I have installed catalyst driver, I always make sure /etc/X11/xorg.conf file is created with “aticonfig –initial -f” command.

If this does not work, you might as well give xorg-edger ppa’s fglrx installer a try.

Hey, I have a Sony VPCZ2190X which has a removable external card which essentially acts like a dual graphics setup when connected. Whenever i try to start X with the card attached, i get a kernel panic. Im using 13.10 and the latest beta driver at the time of this post (13.11 beta 9.2) Is there something im missing?

Just to check, I ran --listpkg against some catalyst versions (even as old as catalyst-12.10) in Ubuntu 13.10 and all show Ubuntu/saucy. I don’t know what to say (I too am confused now, as how can even such an old version of catalyst show Ubuntu/saucy). I used to use Mint (as one of my distros) few months back, but these days I have replaced it with something else as my second distro, therefore whatever I say wouldn’t address your issue.

No, saucy comes up as Ubuntu/saucy in 13.10. Ubuntu/source used to be there all the time. However, when I checked it from non-ubuntu OS (or non 13.10 distro e.g Arch) 13.11beta showed only till Ubuntu/raring (and Ubuntu/source of course).

Hi
Thank you for this guide. It really helped me to get my graphics card working nicely in Ubuntu 13.10. However, I still have a couple of issues. I have implemented the card switcher described in step 6, which works great when switching from discrete GPU to the integrated Intel GPU, but when switching the other way my system switches to low graphics mode. I then have to do a full reboot to get up and running again using the discrete GPU If you or anyone else has any advice on resolving this issue it would be greatly appreciated. My graphics card is a Radeon HD 8870M.

I am also having issues using dual monitors when the discrete GPU is active, but again this works fine using the intel graphics. Any help here too would be a bonus.